NEW ORLEANS – Surescripts is expanding its nationwide e-prescribing network with a new service that will allow for the exchange of clinical health information, officials announced Monday at the MGMA 2010 annual conference in New Orleans.

Officials said the new service will make it easier for physicians, pharmacies, PBMs, health systems, electronic health record systems and health information exchanges to send and receive clinical messages, including up to date summaries of a patient's recent visits with their healthcare providers.

"The services will be new, but the approach will not," said Harry Totonis, president and CEO of Surescripts. "Surescripts will adhere to the same set of principles that propelled e-prescribing adoption in the U.S. to 200,000 physicians in less than a decade: privacy, security, neutrality, physician and patient choice, transparency, collaboration and quality. We will continue to work with and enable our EMR partners. These are the principles that brought together more healthcare organizations for the purpose of electronically sharing information than ever before and these are the principles we will keep. Our network will be open and neutral and we see it as complementary to other healthcare networks and to local exchanges."

The expansion includes providing Surescripts' users with new secure messaging tools through its investment in Beaverton, Ore.-based Kryptiq. Surescripts's new Clinical Interoperability Services when combined with Kryptiq's clinical messaging technology, will allow the company to offer three options to electronic health record vendors, health systems, health information exchanges and the physicians they serve.

"What this subscription messaging service promises is an affordable pathway for doctors to meet several of the criteria for meaningful use without disruption of office workflows and with assurance of reliability equal to that which they already expect with e-prescribing exchanges," commented David C. Kibbe, MD, senior advisor at the American Academy of Family Physicians.

CHICAGO – A new white paper from HIMSS Analytics, sponsored by Lantronix, surveyed 825 healthcare organizations to explore the progress of interfacing medical devices with the EMR.

Recording and charting changes in vital signs has been identified as one of the core areas that will be measured for meaningful use incentives.

The white paper details progress on these efforts, and finds that just one-third of the hospitals surveyed indicated they had an active interface between medical devices at their organization and their electronic medical record (EMR).

Those hospital respondents with such an interface in place, meanwhile, indicated the ability to automatically chart data from the device directly to the EMR as the primary reason.

The research, conducted from June 2009 to June 2010, explored the number of types of devices in place at an organization, not the overall number of devices present. The survey included data from 825 U.S hospitals responding to questions about medical devices in general and how/if these devices are integrated into the EMR environment.

“The transfer of data directly from a medical device to the EMR can reduce potential medical errors and improve patient care because no manual transfer of data takes place,” said John H. Daniels, vice president, healthcare organizational services, for HIMSS. “Such data integration also improves workflow by saving time for clinical staff, a valuable benefit when looking at nursing shortages in healthcare.”

Inspirational line

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.— Albert Schweitzer"

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— John Quincy Adams

Life Quotes, Proverbs, and Sayings

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Started by a group of young, enthusiastic physicians in the year 1999, Vision Infonet was incorporated in the State of Illinois in 2001. As a vibrant enterprising organization, we began our journey towards the world leadership in providing the IT enabled back-office services to medical facilities.....more